Gisteren naar de free jazz/improv van het Herb Robertson Macroquarktet gaan kijken in De Werf (Brugge). Ongetwijfeld een te hoog plinkeplonke-gehalte voor de fans van het traditionele werk, maar de grilligheid werd gelukkig gecompenseerd door humor, zelfrelativering en mooie interactie. Zonder dat had het misschien te dicht bij de Britse free improv gezeten die me doorgaans net iets té abstract is. Verslagje hier

Ter plekke ook nog wat gepalaverd met enkele sleutelsupporters van de free jazz in België (de ene door een gerenommeerde blog, de andere door een online shop gespecialiseerd in de muziek). ‘t Is een kleine wereldje, maar de passie is groot.

Volgende week: Pere Ubu (dinsdag), William Elliott Whitmore (vrijdag) en Kinky Friedman (Bill Clintons favoriete schrijver! Zondag! In Eeklo!). En ook nog gaan werken, als ‘t even kan. En lezen. Doodverf van Van der Heijden momenteel. Vreemd boek: herkauwt grote lappen uit De Tandeloze Tijd (overbodig voor de fans), maar onthult te weing voor nieuwkomers. Gelukkig is er die expansieve taalrijkheid.

Nog steeds aan het kijken naar het eerste seizoen van Green Wing. Ik kan me niet herinneren hoe lang het geleden is dat ik nog zo hard gelachen heb met een komische serie. Van de makers van het over het paard getilde Smack The Pony. Die laatste serie vond ik allesbehalve de moeite, de reden waarom ik de Green Wing-boot zo lang heb afgehouden. Onterecht dus.

De plaat van Shrinebuilder is anders dan verwacht (iets wat ik nog niet krijg uitgelegd), de nieuwe Om heeft precies weinig toe te voegen aan zijn voorgangers (dat lijkt ook niet de bedoeling) en hetzelfde geldt een beetje voor Black Cobra, niettemin nog steeds het meest verpletterende lawaaiduo van de planeet.

Aankoop van het jaar is nog steeds de Live In Vilnius 2LP van het David S. Ware Quartet.

NP: Om – God Is Good

Two of our lesser known characters from the days of Going Live! would most likely be The Rogers Brothers. Randolf and Rudy Rogers, an old musical hall act, sons of the popular seaside variety act, Bucket and Spade. Bucket and Spade, both dead, survived only as a framed photograph on top of Randolf’s piano. Rudy, played by me, was prone to awful bouts of depression over the death of his parents. It would descend upon him as a black cloud and the boys would declare “Mr Gloom is in the room”, or “Mr Glum has come” or “Mr Misery is in the vicinity“. Trev, as Randolf, would attempt to cheer his brother up with a jaunty “Hey ho! Pop pop!” As in sketches so in life.

Quite why this was allowed to be on a Saturday morning childrens show is bewildering to me. Obviously we must have sat around and thought, what are the kids into these days? And the answers that came back were hippies, barbers and old-time music hall acts singing vaguely rude songs and weeping openly over the death of their parents. Hey ho! Pop pop!

One of our songs was an old music hall ditty called Carry Your Little Belisha Beacon Everywhere You Go. We’ve sung this song throughout our career in a variety of guises; the Eggrobats- bald men in nappies, The Rogers Brothers, and a scout leader and his boyscout friend.

The Eggrobats- Simon Hickson, Phil Dennison, Trev Neal. Accompanied by Sophie Aldred, Kath Jones and Doon Mackichan.

Here we are accompanied by The Doves from Dan and the Doves. The Doves being Sophie (later to be Ace in Dr. Who), kath, and Doon, (later to be big comedy cheese in The Day Today, Smack the Pony and the recent Taking the Flak). Poor Doon is obscured by the big glowing end of Trev’s beacon.

If you’d like to know the lyrics to this rude song you can find them here. I’ve tried to find out who it’s by but everytime I do a search I come back to me. I promise you, we did pinch it.

Nothing’s new and nothing’s original. We based the Rogers Brothers on The Cox Twins. However weird our creations were, the real deal were even weirder.

The Cox Twins

You can find out more about Frank and Fred here. But sadly not much. They married twins, Estelle and Pauline Miles, and then they all lived together in one house. The first time I saw them I was astonished. I can’t remember what they did, I just remember thinking they were nuts. In the nicest possible sense. They were funny and weird, but what did they do? They appear briefly in Funny Bones, Peter Chelsom’s film starring Lee Evans and Jerry Lewis and set in Blackpool. Truly, what more could you want from a film. The only clip I could find isn’t a performance, but you might like it anyway. Here they are being interviewed on TVam. With their twin wives.

Even less survives of the Rogers Brothers. They’re on our live video, the Blimey That’s Good Tour, but who has videos? Even I don’t have it. I used to hate watching it. The day before the show was recorded I had some jabs for a forthcoming holiday in The Gambia. I was given the wrong dose for, I think, Typhoid. Five times too much! Throughout the show I look like I am about to die. Hey ho! Pop pop!

But I did find something. One of the most bizarre clips I’ve seen. It’s us as the Rogers Brothers taking part in a Comic Relief special; singing along with a host of celebrities to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. Everything’s here. It ranges from the apalling, Nicholas Witchell miming keyboards; to the moving, Caron Keating gooning around with her mum. You’ll see other faces that might lead to Mr Gloom coming into the room. And I don’t mean Noel Edmonds. And there’s a few degenerates in there too. I’ll let you figure out who they are.

And remember, nothing really matters. Hey ho! Pop pop!

Err, in short, yes there are, fool! And here are the videos to prove it. I’m overlooking the proliferation of idiotic comments that inevitably get left after any clip of a woman comedian, which generally take one of two themes: a) it hasn’t got a penis so I won’t laugh at it, or b) it hasn’t got a penis but, luckily for it, I quite fancy lending it mine.

Consider this a cheat sheet for the next time you meet a comedy neanderthal whose idea of an amusing act is some prick taking the piss out of an accountant in the front row for half an hour before engaging in a series of poorly-constructed stories whose raison d’etre is some sort of wank mime.

Or worse, Jimmy Carr.

Ava Vidal

Hils Barker

Josie Long

Liz Bentley

Shappi Khorsandi

Sarah Millican

Kerry Godliman

Isy Suttie

*** update: more funny women (a history lesson) (thanks Rich) ***

Josie Lawrence

Victoria Wood

Phyllis Diller

Jo Brand

Smack the Pony

The Colonians (Colognites? Kolners? What do you call someone who lives in Cologne?)…anyway, they love their eis (ice ceam) here, young and old. As soon as the sun comes out, everyone has a cone in their hand.

*

Stats:

• Weather: As evidenced by my clothes. AM: jeans, long-sleeved shirt, socks, shoes, scarf, coat. Froze. Later AM: jeans, t-shirt, socks, shoes. Sweated. Early PM: Same outfit as Later AM. Froze. Late PM: Didn’t leave the house.
• Mileage: Many. 4,235 cobblestones.* (Number made up, may or may not be anywhere near exact.)
• Food: Shrimp salad. Two soy mochas. Yes, count them. Two. Since I will not be having anything resembling decent coffee or chocolate for the next however long I’m in Scotland.
• Discovery: So. Yeah. I’ve been walking around thinking I’m all cool with my umbrella, with the Oscar Wilde quote in German, and the word “WETTER” in English. However, as Danielle kindly informed me, the umbrella doesn’t actually say “WETTER” in English. Wetter is the word German word for “weather.” Oh, yeah, I so knew that.
• Media: Smack the Pony and more Smack the Pony, courtesy of Danielle
  
• Worst Thing: I’m ready to go home.
• Best Thing: I’m ready to go home.
• Word of the Day: WETTER!
  

*

Last night, my friend Danielle came into Cologne to visit me. He brought me gorgeous and thoughtful gifts: A bottle of champagne, as well as wine and marmalade produced by his family, and his company for more than half the day. He also brought a fountain of knowledge about Cologne, Germany, the German language and the country’s history. It was wonderful to walk around the city, to explore the streets and parks, as well as each other’s minds. He is funny, articulate, a delightful storyteller and an amazing human being. He introduced me to about a million authors that I now must read, two comedy groups I can’t believe I’ve missed out on (Smack the Pony and Little Britain”), and about a hundred story ideas. Which, of course, I loved.

Now, it’s time to clean and pack… and head back to my temporary home on the isle.

Far and fast, s.

*

This little girl was crawling around on the grate outside the apartment all by herself. I have no idea why, but she looked incredibly cute.

*

“Wine is bottled poetry.” ~Robert Louis Stevenson

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Cult British comedy hails from a cloistered isle where subtlety, eccentricity and surrealism can thrive. US shows may surge across the Atlantic but only a select few wriggle back against the tide; established big-hitters like The Office and Little Britain that are checked in fully-formed before being re-packaged. A Brit writer pitching a fresh idea exclusive to the US market is virtually unheard of, so how did Green Wing creator Victoria Pile get on when she landed Stateside?

“It never happened,” muses Victoria with a wry smile, when asked when she realised she was funny. The four-times-Bafta-nominated creator of Green Wing and Smack the Pony started penning broadcast-worthy sketches for the Beeb while still at Uni, so surely that switch must have flicked earlier than most? “I’m constantly surprised when my work is appreciated by other people,” she continues. “That sounds fake, doesn’t it? But comedy writers need a lot of stroking, and positive feedback – me more than most.”

It doesn’t sound fake. We’re sipping water in her spacious North London front room: it’s comfortable, but clearly a well-lived-in family home where this writer can squeeze in some precious keyboard time before the kids get back. She’s rented some space above a shop to use as an office, she tells me, but the decorators are still in so it’s a working-from-home job ‘til they’re done.

“I get fearful of expectation,” Victoria’s prepared to admit. “I prefer to do a low-profile project and see if it makes a ripple than go out all-guns-blazing. I’ve always abhorred publicity: I don’t like people seeing stuff until it has to be seen.”

So it was an intriguing career curveball, following Emmy and Bafta-winning hits and mounting public anticipation, to plunge into a notoriously competitive overseas market to produce a pilot, set in a police precinct, rather than risk dropping the bat in Britain.

“America lured me, partly because I didn’t have to recreate something else immediately here: I went to avoid the second-album syndrome,” she goes on. But far from burying her head in the sand, she’d buried her head in a goldfish bowl. “Over there you’re exposed so completely; you can’t just say, ‘Let me do it, and then you can have a look.’ Every step of the way, you’re naked.”

Dismantling the tight-knit Green Wing team in 2006 – cast and crew largely handpicked by Victoria herself – felt “like breaking up a family unit,” she admits: “A lot of the cast spent more time with us than with their own families, and that was the hard act to follow, not whether we’d do something funny again.”

Of course, ‘funny’ couldn’t be more subjective. “I struggle, because people say I have a slightly perverse view; an unusual take on things. I never understood that. I always assume I represent a large number of similarly minded people; it’s just how I see the world. You can’t choose how to approach something comedically; well I can’t, anyway,” she goes on. “Vogues change, and when I started out I was very much into the style of comedy that I’ve since developed, and other people weren’t. Now we’ve gone about-face and there’s more trend for big studio-based comedies. But I’ll always go for what I instinctively find funny.”

But protestation aside, it was for idiosyncrasy rather than conformity that Victoria’s agent and manager, who had existing positive relationships with US networks, “hoiked” her across the Atlantic. “Now, I’m not a ‘networks’ person,” she begins, settling back into her chair: “I prefer HBO and cable; they tend to be more off-centre.” It’s already clear that this will be no pleasant fiction where a saucer-eyed Brit skips through bountiful fields of cotton candy.

“I don’t want to slag America off,” she’s keen to stress. For while it’s tempting to snuggle you down with a dustbin-sized vat of popcorn and sensationalise this cautionary tale like a gravelly-voiced Hollywood trailer, the simple truth is that the studio-driven US market is an acquired taste for a British writer. Especially one whose devoted creative control at the helm of her own complex shows have attracted monikers like “visionary” and “genius” from cast-member Tamsin Grieg and fellow Green Wing writer Fay Rusling respectively.

“You have to be prepared to have a lot of top-down input,” is her delicately democratic way of putting it. The fact that American networks can pay extremely well is no secret, and Victoria draws attention to various fellow writers who have sustained a healthy trade contributing scripts to other shows. Suffice to say that getting a fresh one off the ground is somewhat different.

“There’s a certain hypocrisy in saying, ‘We want you because you do something different; we love your work; we understand your process and we want you to do it over here,’ when that’s the very thing that they cannot let happen,” she declares, frowning slightly as a shadow of that past frustration crosses her face. “They crush it, and crush it, and crush it, and crush it, and you end up with something that’s neither my choice nor their choice.”

“I was treated fantastically well, with a lot of respect, and actually given a lot of freedom according to other sources,” she reflects; perhaps proof positive that incompatible personalities and working practices were at least partly responsible. “It was a strangely enlightening experience. We did do a pilot; I’m going out there to pitch something else, and I’m trying to do co-productions at the moment. But the things you hear are absolutely jaw-dropping: until you’re immersed in it, you don’t quite believe it’s possible.”

“I spent most of the time either in hysterics with laughter, or in tears with disbelief at how they conduct themselves. Considering it’s the epicentre of the entertainment industry, I was horrified at the outmoded, archaic, creative-crushing things that went on.”

By way of example, Victoria recollects a memo that was passed her way encouraging producers to perpetuate the influx of British talent, but not to sign any deals: “It recommended reinventing the format with your homegrown crew,” she explains. “Rip the idea off, in other words. It was an article in an American publication. They’re not embarrassed about it: ‘We don’t need to buy the formats; we’ll just do it ourselves.’ It makes you slightly fearful of sending things ad-hoc as a writer. As an actor there are some brilliant people there; lovely casting directors; in fact everyone’s brilliant apart from the system.”

And what a vast system it is. The same year that she was in the midst of it all, the network commissioned eighty scripts – a quarter of which were produced as pilots. Three went to series, and all three of them were pulled. “There was not one success out of the whole season’s production,” laments Victoria. “What I didn’t realise was that there’s a rush of British actors coming out every year to do the pilot season: if you get picked up, you’re made forever.”

“I fought tooth-and-nail to get Stephen Mangan out there, but we were also forced to have two ‘named’ stars from their stable – Jason Alexander [Seinfeld], who’s fantastic but wasn’t right for the part, and Orlando Jones [one of the original cast of Mad magazine’s late-night sketch series MADtv], who again is a tremendously talented comedian, playing completely the wrong part.”

Half-an-hour in, and Victoria has already demonstrated pretty transparently how involved she expects to be when getting a comedy show off the ground, and it’s similarly clear that this approach won’t transplant well to US soil. But there isn’t a flicker of a toy-throwing tantrum in her voice: frustration, yes, but she’s not precious for the sake of it. Her talent’s rooted in a more temperate climate, where tight creative control happens to be what she’s very, very good at – and taking that away can mean letting a project sway off course.

My timely reminder that, for her seminal creation Green Wing, she’s credited as creator, producer, casting director, script editor, film editor and writer – albeit one of several in many cases – is met with a mixture of a smile and a wince. “I didn’t choose those titles,” she points out, “but as a description of the job description then yes, it’s accurate. You need somebody trying to achieve what they want, or don’t know they want. Quite often all I know is what I don’t want.”

It may take a couple of seconds to unpick the sentence, but makes sense. And for commissioners, collaborators and cast alike, it boils down to putting your trust implicitly in someone else’s creative vision.

“You have to have quite a loyal and tolerant group of people to contribute to something blindly,” she agrees. “But as a ‘tame’ writer you’re exempt from some of the difficult decisions that rack us all. You’re in a childlike state: write as freely as you like, and we’ll take the best bits. All the writers on Green Wing had careers in their own right, but as a unit we were like a different writer.”

Her confession that she once associated each member of the team with a body part – the kidney, the little finger and so-on – prompts the obvious question: which was she? “It depends who you ask,” she smiles darkly. “Probably the stick up the arse. Although the real answer, of course, is the c-word.” Whether this refers to gestating and giving birth to her precious creative baby, or something infinitely more self-deprecating, we both decide to leave hanging.

A likely byproduct of building a tried-and-trusted team of bodily organs is that you’ll want to work with them again, and shipping Green Wing stalwart Stephen Mangan across for the pilot season is a case in point. Mark Heap, too, had been penciled in from the outset, but was replaced at the studio’s behest by Jason Alexander. Does she often put pen to paper to shape a character with a favoured actor already in mind?

“Since Green Wing I’ve done that… three times,” she reports after a moment’s thought. “I put Steve and Mark in all of them, in my head. But Mark didn’t get the part, and Jason wanted to do slapstick, drop his trousers and show his bum. There was a line in the script where he opens a drawer and there’s a portable vagina inside, and he wanted the prop to be made. You don’t need to see it,” she emphasises, sounding slightly exasperated as the voice of understated British comedy: verbal humour that conjures vivid mental images, rather than literally and figuratively shoving a vagina in someone’s face.

Setting aside comic preferences however, Victoria is quick to praise the talents of the lead actor that was dropped into her production from above: “Jason has incredible comic planning, hilarious timing, and knows a lot of martial arts so there were some incredible visuals,” she points out. But as she’s already made clear, it was the system, not the individuals, which crushed the project.

“They cut all those bits out, including some gorgeous nonsense with putty,” she reveals, with palpable regret that said putty-play won’t be lighting up our screens anytime soon. “He could equal Mark in many ways; in terms of physicality he was great. There’s a scene where he’s almost grooming the new boy: he comes round behind him, puts his hands round his neck and gobs on his cheek. The executives cut it out; they said it was leery and unattractive.”

Another “cracking scene” where Steve attends a lesbian meeting, shot with a gay female stand-up, survived right up until the wire: “They ripped it out the night before,” reveals Victoria, as if they’d torn the still-beating heart from her already maimed project: “They were too ashamed to take it out earlier.”

It’s revealing that when asked how the show was compromised, she recalls very specific episodes; vignettes that made her chuckle, but failed to crack a smile on the execs further up the command chain. Of course, even the pioneering hour-long format of Green Wing – with its series-long plot arcs that seemed so far removed at first glance from the self-contained skits of Smack The Pony – was built around sketches, expertly woven together as part of a wider narrative. Individual episodes are the blocks that make Victoria Pile’s comedy work, and sliding them out one by one is like a high-stakes bout of Jenga.

“You can cover more material with sketches,” she affirms. “Your territory’s wider. If you’re out to make a really comedic experience, you want the freedom to go hither and thither, to cover as much material as we do in our real lives.” She landed on a police precinct as a setting for the untitled pilot we’re discussing for much the same reasons that a hospital became the setting for her last hit show: you can find all sorts of people under one roof. Green Wing was originally intended to weave the lives of car park attendants, canteen staff and everyone else alongside the medical and admin staff, but it never quite happened that way.

“This pilot followed four detectives’ lives and loves: it wasn’t really to do with policing, but there was some procedural stuff in there because that’s what they wanted,” Victoria explains. “This body within the department is there to check up on procedures, and they’re so litigious. We developed a potentially fantastic relationship between the slightly anal character trying to catch everyone out, and normal detectives with their everyday lives. But it was the lack of interest in those peripheral things that screwed it for me: I wanted to indulge in the little idiosyncrasies of the characters; they wanted the story.”

From the off there was a lot of “slipping and sliding” and top-down adjustments, which as Victoria readily admits, was “exactly what I do, but done by someone else.” With very different sensibilities pulling in opposite directions, the chances of the comedy kernel surviving intact were slim to minimal. Pressing on, her team wrote two new blind scripts that impressed another network, and they commissioned a fresh hour-long script. Then the writers strike happened, and it all ground to a halt once more.

“Ultimately, in America all your experiences often come down to one person, and everyone’s curtailing to them,” she explains. “Over here, you cast someone and say to the broadcaster, ‘I’ve found some great talent, here’s the tape, have a look.’ Over there, you have to make a deal for two series before you can pass them. You need at least two other options, then you go to the studio – not the network – and they all perform in front of 40-odd people on stage, up against each other like gladiators. It’s The X-Factor, basically. Then if the studio executive agrees with you, you go forward to the network and do it all again.”

An observation that’s hardly worth making to a British audience – that a talented small-screen comic actor won’t necessarily take well to a live stage – is the final, forceful reminder that things are untouchably different over there. Victoria shrugs. “I’ve learnt a lot, and have less belief that they want what works here,” she concludes philosophically. “If I make a decision to do something that works there, that’s another matter.

© Nick Carson 2008. First published in Issue 10 of 4Talent magazine

I was using Freecorder last night to record a few songs from YouTube that aren’t available anywhere else, when I remembered the British sit-com Smack the Pony – written and performed by three female British comedians (Fiona Allen, Doon Mackichan and Sally Phillips).

Smack the Pony was around from 1999 – 2003, and was awarded two Emmys. On IMDB, it has a 7.6 out of 10 rating. I happened across this show when it was on Bravo a few years ago. It was also another one of the reasons I purchased a multi-region DVD player – since the full shows are only available on German DVDs.

The show was a series of short skits – all unrelated with no recurring characters. One of my favorite parts of the show was the end-of-show music video parity. They spoofed all-girl bands, techno, punk, country and roughly every other genre of music.

This parity of techno music/video was always one of my favorites. It is a tweak on a British dance club song who’s name I can’t seem to remember. In the show, it’s called “I Just Can’t Find My Friend.”

If you check out “Smack the Pony” on YouTube, you can find most of their music videos. You will also find a hefty volume of their other skits, too. This one was one of my favorites…

These were pretty solid, too…

Yep, another rainy day…seriously the weather here’s been awful. Either u dehydrate and almost die because it’s so hot outside, or it rains and pours! So everybody at home is just sleeping so all i’ve been doing is internet surfing all morning (woke up early for no reason :/). A friend sent me a video of Shaun Micallef, and it just too funny! why don’t they broadcast stuff like that on tv here? It’s hilarious (most of them anyway), i just have to share it! I’m also a big fan of Smack the Pony, watched all those as well on Youtube.

Start with these:

Micallef:

Smack the Pony:

Le estoy cogiendo el gusto a este programa: Smack the pony. Ver a tipas haciendo humor burro es de agradecer. Aquí va una sabia reflexión sobre el mundo del tanga.

Aquí van otros dos sketches de humor femenino y burro. Smack the pony. Una serie escrita por mujeres que podría hacer reír a los legionarios más soeces. Ni una gota de misticismo Evax. Sin música de Glen Medeiros, ni chulazos con el pecho de chocolatina, ni histerismo neoyorkino a lo Sexo en Nueva York. Con dos ovarios.

Os dejo este sketch de un programa inglés llamado Smack the Pony. Humor escrito, pensado e interpretado por chicas. Genial y sencillo.

Ik heb een baan waarin ik me deftig moet gedragen. Niet intern, daar kan ik me wel uitleven, maar wel tegenover klanten en leveranciers. Formeel en correct, zo heb ik het trouwens ook het liefst. Het is niet omdat ik een deftige zotte doos ben dat ik dit moet invloed hebben op mijn werk.

Maar dan zijn er zo van die dagen, en dan kan het niet meer stuk.

Een telefoontje naar een nieuwe leverancier in Nederland, ik krijg een heerlijk uitbundige Hollandse dame aan de lijn. Na de gebruikelijke geplogendheden ontspint er zich een conversatie die als volgt eindigt:

Dus, mevrouw, zou u in de toekomst duidelijk de projectnaam op alle briefwisseling en in uw mails kunnen vermelden, zodat er geen enkele verwarring kan zijn?

(888 – inaudible) Vanzelfsprekend, geen enkel probleem, maar wat hebben we er nu op vermeld dan?

Smack

(888 – inaubible) Smack!!?? Oh, hemels toch!! Is dit niet goed gevonden van ons? (Met een aanstekelijke schaterlach). Waar zouden we dat vandaan gehaald hebben? Smack??!!

The pony
(O god, als een pavlov effect, droogweg en heel spontaan, wat zeg ik nu?)

(888 – inaudible) Oh!! Zàààààlig!!! Hihihihi!!! U kent dat, dat is gewéldig, niet!!! Wat een vrouwen, wat een humor! (Met nog een uitbundiger schaterlach)

Ja, heerlijk én geweldig! (En ik zit smakelijk mee te lachen)

Denkt u nu het ene stuk van de conversatie weg wegens onhoorbaar en snap waarom mijn collega me sprakeloos en onbegrijpelijk zit aan te staren (misschien er toch nog bij vermelden dat ze nog nooit gehoord heeft van “Smack the pony”).